Indicators of a memory's performance can include the amount of power consumed by the memory and the speed at which a processor can access data in the memory. Typically, a first level cache memory has the lowest possible latency as compared to other levels of memory. In general, lower latency means that less time is used to provide access to data stored in the memory. This in turn helps to improve performance of a processor. Higher level cache memory (e.g., Level 3—L3) may have higher access latencies due to their design configuration relative to the processor. As such, the processor will access the higher level cache less frequency. However, when accessing higher level cache, there is a greater possibility of a read request having no corresponding entry in the memory (i.e., a miss). When there is no entry in the memory, the memory is still activated (e.g., powered) because qualifying the miss takes an extra clock cycle from when the read request is detected and the memory is enabled.
Thus, the memory dissipates power even though a read operation is not performed in the memory. When the memory is part of a mobile device such as a cellular phone or tablet computer, the power dissipation limits battery life, which is undesirable.